


Never Give Up

by Gingersaurus



Category: Fudanjuku
Genre: High School, Idols
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 01:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingersaurus/pseuds/Gingersaurus
Summary: The faculty was looking for any reason to disband Fudanjuku.  The club that pledged to help anyone who asked for it, and never received any such requests, was useless in the eyes of Nakano Fudanshi Gakuen.  When Fudanjuku failed to meet the membership quota on time, the staff jumped on the opportunity to pull the plug on the group.  But the members of Fudanjuku won't go down without a fight.  Now, in the waning hours of their existence, these young men will stop at nothing to save the club that brought them together.





	1. I've Got a Plan

The room was frustratingly cluttered. They had tried to clean it out many times, but no one had the heart to throw any of it away. There were the things that were easily divvied up to be returned to their respective owners. There were things that could not be dealt with so easily. Kojirou’s scrapbook of fashion magazine clippings. Yousuke’s emergency sewing kit. The spare Nintendo controller that Renji had brought in for video game night.

They had tried to keep in touch with the former members but time and distance wore away at their relationships. They lost touch. There was no way to return everything to the graduates. Or to tell them that Fudanjuku was being disbanded.

Kouki had come to the clubroom during lunch to try and weed though some of the junk, but he ended up sitting at the desk by the window staring off into the distance. This was the president’s desk; a position Kouki had only occupied for a short time. The members of Fudanjuku knew they were in trouble. Club president, Kojirou, was graduating, along with the last of the original members, Uramasa. Since interest in joining a club like Fudanjuku was low at a school where most students chose to spend their time with athletics, they had little luck recruiting new members.

The year after Kojirou and Uramasa’s graduation, the year that Kouki became president, the faculty gave them three weeks to get one new member to join, so that they would meet school criteria for an official club. In three and a half weeks, they had two first years interested in signing up, thanks to Leo and Light’s tireless campaigning.

It was too late for Fudanjuku, though. The faculty had been itching for an excuse to disband the club since Yousuke founded it. A club that does anything to help people is pointless when no one wants help from a ragtag group of mediocre high school students. They mostly just hung out after school. It was a waste of a perfectly good clubroom, the faculty argued. Kouki wondered why it was considered so wasteful for Fudanjuku to use the closet sized, mold infested room when no one else wanted it when it became available. Still, the staff insisted that they clean it out as soon as possible so another club could move in.

“Kouki?” Kouki turned around. Kensui had entered the room, having seen the door ajar. “Here again?” he sighed. “You don’t have to force yourself to come here outside of the scheduled clean up times. It’s bad for your health to dwell so much.”

Kouki did not respond. Instead, he ran his fingers along the top of the plaque on the desk. It read “President”.

“You should take that home with you,” Kensui said, noticing the contemplative look on Kouki’s face.

“No,” Kouki replied. “It should go to Yousuke. Or Kojirou, at least. They were the real presidents of Fudanjuku.”

“Don’t look down on yourself, Kouki. You are—were—a real Fudanjuku president, too. I mean, to Masaki and Sora, you’re the only Fudanjuku president.”

Kouki’s gaze returned to the window. “I feel bad for those two. They never got to experience Fudanjuku the way we did. The way it was supposed to be.”

Kensui crossed the narrow room and placed a hand on Kouki’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Without meeting his friend’s eyes, Kouki nodded and rose from his chair. He slung his bag over his shoulder and began to follow Kensui out of the room.

As Kensui and Kouki made their way back to the third-year classrooms they overheard the excited chatter of one of the second-year classrooms. They had passed by the open door at first, but then Kouki began to recognize the voices.

“Wait,” he called to Kensui.

“Huh? What is it?” Kensui asked.

Kouki had already returned to the door of the second room classroom and was staring through the opening.

“Kouki, you really shouldn’t—” Kensui’s words were caught in his throat as he approached the doorway.

Inside the second-year classroom, Leo and Light sat huddled together with Masaki and Sora who were gazing intently at their seniors. Light and Leo were sharing the stories about how they joined Fudanjuku.

“And then,” Leo said, “he punch the guy right in the jaw. And I said to myself, ‘I never wanna be on his bad side!’ Oh, but he’s actually really sweet once you get to know him.”

Kouki chuckled, imagining how Uramasa would react to being called “sweet”. That’s when the others noticed the two third-years standing there.

“Setou-senpai, Aiba-senpai!” Light waved. “We were just talking to Sora and Masaki about Fudanjuku.”

“We heard,” Kensui said. “I hope they aren’t boring you,” Kensui said to the two first years.

Masaki shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “We love hearing these kinds of stories. Right, Kusakabe-kun?” Sora nodded silently. “We actually decided to come find Kariyase-senpai and Fujimori-senpai because we wanted to hear more about Fudanjuku. I wish we could have been a part of it.”

A sadness weighed on the room for a moment. Regrets were breathed out on sighs.

Then Kouki spoke. “You are,” he said. “You are a part of Fudanjuku.”

“But, Setou-senpai—” Masaki began.

“Because,” Kouki interrupted, “Fudanjuku isn't done for yet.”

“Kouki,” Kensui said, “we’ve already been disbanded. There isn’t really anything we can do.”

Kouki spun on his heels and straightened his bag on his shoulder as he strode out of the classroom. “I have an idea,” he declared.

After the final bell rang to signal the end of the school day, Kensui, Light, and Leo headed for the clubroom. They were intercepted on the way by Masaki and Sora. “Setou-senpai said that we are real members of Fudanjuku,” Masaki explained, “so the least we can do is try to help out.”

“Where is Setou-senpai, anyway? Don’t you two usually show up together, Aiba-senpai?” Light asked.

“Yeah,” Kensui said. “But when I went to his classroom to meet him he wasn’t there.”

“Maybe he’s already in the clubroom?” Leo speculated.

“Must be,” said Kensui.

The group rounded the corner and approached the clubroom. Sora nudged Masaki's arm and pointed up at the sign above the door. “Huh? Hey, guys,” Masaki said. The others looked up at the sign as well. The chipping wood had been polished and the fading kanji reinvigorated. Someone had given new life to the sign that read “Fudanjuku”.

Kensui looked at the clubroom door. There was silence on the other side, but he could still sense a presence. He slid the door open.

Kouki sat opposite them as they entered, polishing a metal plaque from his seat at the president’s desk. The others looked around the room as they entered. “Kouki…” Kensui began. “What on earth did you do…?” Everything had been put away, back where it had been before they were ordered to clean the room out. No, it was even more organized than that. The meeting table in the middle of the narrow room had been cleared of the piles of junk to be sorted, and on the chalkboard was a display of photographs.

“Woah,” Masaki said, looking over Sora’s shoulder as he stared at one of the photos. “These are the original members, right?” He pointed at a picture of five young men in soccer jerseys, flashing the victory sign on a green field.

“Yeah, it is,” Light said. “I only knew Akazono-senpai and Seimyouji-senpai, though.” Light pointed to the members he was referring to as he spoke.

“That’s Shijuuin-senpai, right? The one who founded Fudanjuku?” Leo asked.

“Must be,” said Light.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Kensui confirmed. “Kouki, what’s going on?”

“Sit, everyone,” Kouki instructed. He placed the President's plaque he had been polishing on the desk in front of him and turned it to face the others. “Let’s get out club back.”


	2. Reflections

The humming of the lonely sewing machine echoed in the empty hallway. Kojirou did not dare look up from his work, not even when he heard the rustling of plastic bags next to him.

“You should eat when you finish that seam,” Yousuke said, taking a seat next to his junior and opening up one of the bento boxes he had bought.

“It may take me a while,” Kojirou grumbled. “I’m not as good at this as you. Honestly, why do we have to learn to sew our own clothes anyway?”

“Fashion students just learn the basics,” Yousuke explained. “Even I knew most of what they taught us first year from cosplaying. It’s important for if you ever need to do repairs.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kojirou sighed.

“Can I see?”

“Are you gonna judge me for it?”

“I’m judging you already. Your tension’s off, you’ll have to redo it.”

“What? Oh, come on!” Kojirou jabbed his senior in the shoulder. Yousuke retaliated by slapping Kojirou across the cheek with his chopsticks.

“Eat already, it’s getting late,” Yousuke said, sliding the unopened bento towards Kojirou. “You know, you complain about how annoying this is but you’re still here working so hard on it after hours. I guess that’s just who you are. You never take anything lightly. That’s why I was so happy to see you be my successor as President.”

Kojirou looked up at Yousuke whose unfocussed eyes were staring at nothing in particular. There was a sorrow in his face. “So, I guess you heard, huh?” Kojirou said.

Yousuke nodded. “Momotarou told me. I take him out to eat sometimes to make sure he doesn’t starve, and, last time, he just blurted it out. That guy always says things the wrong way. I guess it’s worse now that he’s working himself to death with that mangaka…”

“He’s probably pretty upset about it, too, huh? He was the first member you recruited.”

“Yeah… I guess he would be.” Yousuke paused for a moment. “Kouki-kun is the current President, right?”

“Yeah. I feel kind of bad, though. He would have been such a good President but he’s not even going to get a chance to prove himself.”

“I guess it can’t be helped.” Yousuke closed his empty bento and put it in the plastic bag to throw away.

Kojirou could feel Yousuke’s spirit sinking. He put a hand on his senior’s shoulder. “President Yousuke,” he said. Yousuke looked at Kojirou, a drop of surprise tinting his sad eyes. “We can’t let this club go down like this. Will you go back with me? We’ll give it a true Fudanjuku goodbye.”

Yousuke’s eyes darted away. Kojirou drew back into his chair, wondering if he had gone too far.

“If we do this,” Yousuke finally said, “we do it together. All of us.”

Kojirou nodded, determination seeping through his confident smile. "Right," he said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened up Messages. "All of us."


	3. Hasegawa Ai

The day was Monday. They had until Friday to turn things around. On Friday, the faculty would be coming to the clubroom to clear everything out, and it would be much harder to get official status back after that. They would use the clubroom as their headquarters for the next four days, and would report there during all free time; before school, during lunch, and after school. At each meeting, every member would present an idea for how they could improve the school community.

“I spoke to the art students about painting a mural!” Leo announced.

“And?” asked Kouki.

“They liked the idea! Oh, but when they asked what of, I hadn’t thought about that yet, so I just said a big happy sunshine… And, well…” Leo turned his cheek to show a smiling yellow ball with the word “No” written across it.

“Is that acrylic?” asked Light.

“Yeah,” said Leo. “You can tell by the texture—”

“Next,” said Kouki, as Leo stroked the masterpiece on his face.

“President Setou!” said Masaki, raising his hand.

Kensui cracked a small smile at the formal gesture. Kouki called on the first-year.

“We could offer to help with cleaning classrooms.”

Kouki smiled gently. “That’s a very good idea.” He recalled in his first year when they had helped with classroom clean up. Momotarou had gotten locked in the janitor’s closet without his glasses and broken a pipe. They spent the rest of the year fundraising to pay for the damages. “We may be able to do that, but we should come up with as many ideas as possible. Anything else?”

“We run errands for the sports teams,” Sora said softly.

“That’s… Actually a really good idea,” said Kouki.

“It’s perfect!” said Light. “If we get the sports teams on our side we’ll definitely—”

The sliding door slammed open. The headmaster stood in the doorway.

“Headmaster—!" the young men called. Kouki rose from his seat.

The Headmaster scanned the room. “Weren’t you boys supposed to be cleaning this room out?” said the Headmaster.

“With all due respect, sir, we still have until Friday,” Kouki explained calmly.

“Well, get on with it then,” the Headmaster demanded.

Kensui scoffed under his breath.

“Aiba-kun,” the Headmaster said sternly. Kensui looked up reluctantly. “I will speak with you in the hall.”

“Huh? But he didn’t do anything!” said Light.

“That’s of no concern to you,” said the Headmaster. “Now, Aiba-kun.”

Kensui rose from his seat beside the president and shuffled out of the small room. The Headmaster closed the door behind them. Immediately, Leo jumped to his feet and pressed his ear against the door. Light and his juniors followed. Kouki slowly made his way across the room from his desk. As he did, he watched the eyes of the others widen. Sweat smeared the paint off Leo’s cheek.

“President,” said Light, “you need to hear this.” Light stood up and motioned for Kouki to take his place. Kouki knelt down and put his ear against the door.

“There will be serious consequences if you don’t tell the truth, Aiba-kun,” the Headmaster said.

“I swear I don’t know anything. Please tell me what’s going on, why are you asking me about my girlfriend?” Kensui sounded stressed.

“So if we checked your cell phone, we would find that you haven’t contacted Hasegawa Ai since last night?”

“No, I haven’t heard from her. Why?”

“Aiba Kensui,” said the Headmaster, “I regret to inform you that your girlfriend, Hasegawa Ai, has been kidnapped.”


End file.
